Orlando 'Medical City' a model of lab's potential

Southwest Florida needs look no further than Orlando for an example of what landing Jackson Laboratories' proposed personalized medicine institute could mean for the region's economy.

Jackson Laboratory executives use the so-called Medical City at Lake Nona -- a sprawling biomedical hub minutes from Orlando International Airport and anchored by a branch of the California-based Sanford-Burnham Institute -- as the paragon for what their venture could become.

On what was once scrubby cattle land in a relatively remote part of Orange County, Medical City already is home to the University of Central Florida School of Medicine and UCF's Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences. In the works are the $400 million Nemours Children's Hospital and the $600 million Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Perhaps more important, Medical City has also attracted two commercial pharmaceutical ventures that have latched on to Sanford-Burnham, the operator of one of only four National Institute of Health-approved computer centers for screening small molecules -- a cutting-edge tool for identifying new potential medicines.

By the end of 2011, more than $2 billion will have been spent on construction within the biomedical park -- the equivalent value of all the boom-time building completed within Sarasota County during 2006.

By the end of this year, Medical City will be providing as many as 5,000 direct jobs.

Like its potential counterpart, Jackson Laboratories has found an empathetic partner in the University of South Florida and likewise the lab will be seeking $100 million from the same state pool that encouraged Medical City's development.

"We believe our partnership with USF and our focus on genetic-space medicine has the potential to spur that kind of development," Mike Hyde, Jackson's vice president-advancement, told the Herald-Tribune. "A powerful partnership between a cutting-edge genomics institute and a forward-thinking medical health science college that wants to move into genetic medicine would have a tremendous economic leverage effect."

Another development of Medical City's magnitude also would be music to the ears of newly elected Gov. Rick Scott, elected on a pledge to create 700,000 jobs in the next seven years.

Like Medical City, Jackson and the 244 highly paid researchers it expects to employ during its first 10 years has the potential to become a magnet for other biomedical players wanting to take part in the Maine-based non-profit's efforts to translate its decades of genetic research to bedside medicine.

It also was Scott's arrival in the governor's mansion that seems to have put Sarasota County in play for Jackson's proposed institute.

Originally slated to be built in Collier County, Jackson officials abruptly withdrew their application for state aid about the time that Scott was being sworn in, saying they wanted the governor's input on their proposal.

Now the lab appears to be leaning mainly towards to two potential sites: Sarasota County and Hillsborough County, both the home to campuses of USF.

Bush's biomedical

It was former Gov. Jeb Bush who took the initiative to convince biomedical research institutes to move to Florida.

Bush used hundreds of millions in state money with local matching funds to bring eight such research groups to the state, starting with the Scripps Institute in 2003, which agreed to build a Florida campus in Palm Beach County's Jupiter.

Orlando "finished a close second" in the race for Scripps, says Eric Ushkowitz, director of BioOrlando, a unit of the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission.

"It was a good learning experience for us," Ushkowitz said. "We realized that there were things we needed to do. The first step was getting UCF approved for a medical school."

The medical school -- coupled with $350 million incentive package from the state incubator money -- was key in attracting Sanford-Burnham, which was operating from La Jolla and Santa Barbara, Calif., but was interested in establishing itself on the East Coast as well.

The Tavistock Group, an international private investment company that controls 7,000 acres surrounding the institute, donated a portion of the 650-acre parcel for Sanford-Burnham to build on.

Now officials in Orlando figure the community will reap as many as 25,000 indirect jobs as a result of Medical City's expansion, in addition to those people receiving their paychecks directly from work at the site.

Part of that calculation is Medical City's proximity to Walt Disney and other backbone attractions that have turned Orlando into a global destination.

"If it were February and your grandfather was in need of expert medical care and you want to accompany him, would you want to go to the Northeast or Midwest or Orlando, Fla., where you can bring your children and be ten minutes from Orlando International Airport," asks Wendy Spirduso, spokeswoman for UCF's College of Medicine.

Since its launch, the initial investment in Medical City has been dwarfed by the $400 million children's hospital and the $600 million veteran's center, which will employ 2,500 in one of the largest Veterans Affairs hospitals in the nation.

The development also has attracted UCF's Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, and a new Florida wing of the Texas-based M.D. Anderson Cancer Research Institute.

A local version?

Could the same kind of medical park-plus be created within the boundaries of Sarasota and Manatee counties?

Most people in the region by now are familiar with the city-in-the-making, a community straddling the Sarasota-Manatee line built around old shell pits that have provided deep lakes as a setting for offices, condominiums, homes, shops and restaurants.

On the Sarasota County side is a growing cluster of industrial, educational and professional organizations, from Keiser College to diamond-grower Gemesis to newcomer Sanborn Studios, the fledgling Hollywood wanne-be. On the Manatee side are subdivisions that range from the affordable to the lavish, including golf courses and a polo club.

Behind all this visible and very usable infrastructure, the property also takes in an additional area roughly the size of Disney's Lake Buena Vista -- 20,000 acres now being use for sod, shell mining and ranching.

"I am unaware of anything like us in Hillsborough," Jensen says, referring to this region's main competition for Jackson's proposed institute.

The key to building a comparable development to Medical City here is not whether there is space, but whether the donated land and a huge cash infusion from government and possibly community foundations would pay off, Jensen said.

"The real acid test is: can you, on a fair-market value basis, do the next transaction," he said. "If you can't, you've put somebody out there in the middle of nowhere."

The governor gets his

So far, Florida's newly installed governor has kept his cards close to his vest regarding Jackson Laboratory.

"We have heard nothing from Gov. Scott yet," Hyde, the Jackson executive, told the Herald-Tribune recently. "We are anticipating a meeting with Scott and his staff -- we hope soon -- at which we can talk about what is their appetite for funding."

The Bar Harbor, Maine-based genetic research lab is free to build a southern campus wherever it wants -- from Texas to North Carolina's Research Triangle -- but money from the Bush-era incubator fund is clearly one of the main draws for the Sunshine State.

While Scott is not talking, it is a safe bet that the vision of a project matching Medical City is not too far from his mind. The future governor paid a visit to Lake Nona in December.

"I know he was real excited about what he saw here," said Spirduso, the UCF medical college spokeswoman.

Economic development officials in Collier County also made their own homage long before Scott did, crafting a plan strongly reminiscent of Medical City.

The aggressive Collier team was clearly "thinking about the kind of set-up at Lake Nona," said Hyde, the Jackson vice president.

With Jackson considering a wider geographic range, the idea of Austin, Texas, also has come up -- as has the notion of simply siting the lab's institute at Lake Nona, alongside Sanford-Burnham.

Staff writer Doug Sword contributed to this report.

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